Training

TOGAF works when an EA Team designer approaches it as necessary scaffolding. Which I Do. Sadly, today using TOGAF requires reading past specifics. Specifics that have snuck in where a concept should be, or context-free advice that masquerades as the universal practice.

Today, it is easy to get distracted from the scaffolding hiding behind specific commentary and not see yourself.

Giving Back Conexiam’s Real World Enterprise Architecture

We leverage free Open standards, TOGAF, IT4IT, etc.
We use them to accelerate our work.

We deliberately give back. We have a long history of participating in Open Standards development. Over the past year Conexiam’s core intellectual property team pulled a consistent set of advice from our practice. Scouring our toolkit, Navigate, EA with TOGAF and Navigate training, Pilot, and Predictable EA for guidance that wasn’t dependent upon using our approach.

We donated the work to the Open Group. Following peer review the Leader’s Guide, Practitioners’ guide and Governors’ guide were published as peer reviewed papers. Today they are in the process of more substantive peer reviews and consensus necessary to become TOGAF Series Guides, representing official best-practice guidance on putting TOGAF to work.

This guidance is designed for a mainstream community commercial organizations. You need to do some mental mapping for it to work in public sector and defense.

TOGAF is an enterprise architecture framework not a cookbook

TOGAF isn’t a cookbook. It’s a framework. It should be used as a framework of essential concepts. It needs to be used by an architect.

There is not a single EA team that doesn’t use the essential universal framework. Not a team that doesn’t use the concepts. Whether they know or not. Or whether they care. Same thing as your industry value chain, or process classification framework. Your organization can use available tools to make hard configuration choices. Or not.

This point is important: everyone uses the same concepts. Not the same technique, not the same template, not the same process. Not the same configuration. Just the same concept.

Deliberately Configure Enterprise Architecture Teams

Ideally, the EA team uses TOGAF’s concept deliberately configured to their circumstances. Or, they can be oblivious and have an accidental design. I never get over the dissonance of seeing EA teams with accidental un-optimized designs. Have never seen a high-functioning team with an accidental design. Not once.

In the past, the problem we faced drafting TOGAF was the monolithic document structure. There wasn’t anyplace else to put guidance, or specific technique. Stuff just got stuffed in, here & there. It was useful. Probably.

TOGAF Journey to a Lean Framework

Today TOGAF is a fat framework. Published as a monolithic document that simultaneously tries to address enterprise architects, designers of EA Team and governors, and consumers of architecture. It is replete with random advice tucked into the middle of essential concepts.

We started our journey to converting TOGAF to a lean framework with the SOA/TOGAF practical guide. Drafting this guide was delayed as the team learned to read past the obscuring specifics and focus on the scaffolding. It was painful. The same problem with the SABSA/ TOGAF integration paper. Less painful.

I started to see the essential scaffolding more clearly. We took that vision of essential scaffolding to heart. Using it as our starting point we optimized Conexiam’s Enterprise Architecture toolkit:

TOGAF Series Guides

This is how open standards are developed. Organizations with vanguard knowledge share with their peers. We put our thinking out to be examined and improved by peers. Other Architecture Forum members have been working on similar efforts. The example TRM (Technical Reference Model), III-RM (Integrated Infrastructure Information Reference Model) and TOGAF Business scenarios techniques have been pulled out and published as separate “TOGAF Series” documents.

Frankly, I’m sorry we didn’t get further with TOGAF 9.1. While I’m proud we pulled 200 pages of chaff out of TOGAF with the TOGAF 9.1 upgrade there is a long way to go. Conexiam’s team felt it was more useful to put our energy into guidance (World Class papers, the Agile Enterprise Architecture case study with CSC), to help people read past the chaff.

Without a strong body of guidance there was no place else to put useful stuff. We now have a place to put useful stuff.

Useful stuff put together into consistent guidance, and specialization. Without a good home, we all inadvertently turn useful stuff into chaff. Specialization and specific guidance gets tucked into the standard. Specialization is not universal. Inconsistent random guidance without the backstory and context is chaff.

Hopefully, in the future there will be less chaff in the standard. Less distractions from essential concepts. Less noise that thoughtful practitioners have to read past to see themselves and see the essential concepts.

The Enterprise Architecture community has more useful guidance on how to use the TOGAF standard than at any point in time. We still have a gap. As my direct team point out, the Leader’s Guide was written for a senior leader, comfortable translating abstract management concepts into practice. Right to my face: ‘Dave, you were writing to yourself.’ Their examples:

how do you use the econometric model the Leader’s Guide speaks about?I thought it was obvious. Now I know it isn’t.

donating more specific guidance documents,
This includes a Public Sector initiative customization of the Leader’s Guide.
We are working on a version of the Practitioners’ guide specifically written for new architects.

highlighting crash & burns stories in the Enterprise Architecture Graveyard .
We all know too many EA teams are low functioning. Literally hanging on by their fingernails. If you see these practices, stop! Stop now! Do your part to professionalize enterprise architecture.

With Conexiam, training for IT4IT Fountadtion Training is as stress-free as turning on your computer. Conexiam offers video training for IT4IT® 2.1 Certification hosted by Dave Hornford. Top grade training for when you have the time.

We believe the ability to gain the skills and knowledge necessary to obtain IT4IT 2.1 Certification at your pace, on your schedule without compromising on course materials and instruction is critical for effective distance education.

We believe effective distance education, or self-study, requires the best available distance education and self-study techniques.

The techniques are not difficult, nor are they secret. In fact, the best distance education techniques apply basic common sense:

Manageable blocks of time

Rich collection of on-line video material and written material

Personal support

Manageable blocks of time

Best practices in teaching complex material are to create digestible portions appropriate to the complexity of the topic. For topics as complex as enterprise architecture and TOGAF certification, an optimal digestible portion is roughly 20 minutes in length. We structured Conexiam’s online TOGAF 9.1 Certification training into 26 blocks, each approximately 20 minutes long.

Rich collection of on-line video material and written material

We all learn best through a combination of listening, watching, reading and doing. In addition, we all have preferred learning styles for different types of material.

We have evolved our online education. Initially we partnered with Desire2Learn, the leading provider of eLearning solutions for post-secondary and corporate education, to provide a rich video/course material mix. With Desire2Learn’s Capture, we are able to blend the power of a personal lecture with slide display. Unfortunately the video quality was lower than we wanted and Desire2Learn couldn’t integrate outside their platform.

Our second evolution was to build a dedicated distance learning platform, training.conexiam.com. This portal allows us to mix multiple media, video, computer demonstration, downloadable material. We are experimenting with improving our education.

Despite our best efforts through the instructor’s explanations, the written material and the case study exercises, students have questions. To address this need, Conexiam provides three methods of additional support as follows:

E-mail for straightforward TOGAF 9 & IT4IT certification questions.

Optional: One-on-one tutorial with Conexiam’s instructors.

Optional:Group case study boot camp

Note: The case study boot camp supports the development of a rich understanding of effective enterprise architecture. It is not a prerequisite for TOGAF certification. The boot-camp is drawn from the exercises of our EA with TOGAF & Navigate course. As an alternative we suggest that students undertake the 9 case study exercises so they can trace why the set of frameworks in the TOGAF standard are there, and why the different phases in the ADM exist.

Conexiam offers a free GRC Training Class that includes training on how to perform EA support for Governance, Risk Management and Compliance (GRC). This training outlines how high-functioning EA teams deliver. To access the course simply create an account at https://training.conexiam.com.

This is a natural fit for a high-functioning EA Team. Best practice Enterprise Architecture has created a clear path to “improving efficiency and effectiveness” that aligns strategy, process, technology & people.

Best practice EA governance needs a small push to provide broad support for GRC.

Experience has shown that there no one right structure, purpose or design for an EA Team. Organizations have focused their EA on strategy or portfolio or project or a combination of these. Best practice EA teams enable organizational change leaders, particular transformation efforts, focused on broad continuous improvement initiatives. For many the default position is all about IT & embedded with an IT organization.

There is no single correct scope, level of detail, or purpose for an EA. Anyone who tells you so should also provide the toner & paper for your resume – you will need it up-to-date. Thoughtlessly following a pre-packaged purpose is no different than recommending a fast-food chain start making Chateaubriand because Chateaubriand is tasty.

An architected approach can typically enable four broad goals:

EA to support Strategy: provide an end-to-end target architecture, and develop roadmaps of change over longer time periods. In this context, architecture is used to identify change initiatives and supporting portfolio and programs.

EA to support Portfolio: Deliver EA to support cross-functional, multi-phase, and multi-project change initiatives. In this context, architecture is used to identify projects, set their terms of reference, align their approaches, identify synergies, and govern their execution.

EA to support Project: Deliver EA to support the Enterprise’s project delivery method to assure compliance with architectural governance, and to support the integration and alignment between projects.

EA to support Solution Deployment: Deliver EA that is used to support solution deployment by defining how the change will be designed and delivered, and finally, act as a governance framework for change

An EA team aligned to purpose is focused. Focus allows getting to done and after a missed purpose failing to get to done is the largest killer of EA teams.

Most importantly, focus enables excellence. EA Leaders understand the skills required, the information to be gathered, the analysis performed and who their stakeholders are. They also know when to communicate; when the decision is taken, when the actions are needed. Following the analogy, cook the Chateaubriand for dinner.

Today most EA teams are in trouble. They are off target; they are late; they are not helpful. If you work for one of these teams or lead one of these teams, ask the hard question: What am I set-up to support and what does my organization want to be helped. Then take action.

In the end: deliver what is needed, when it is required, to the stakeholder who needs it. Be warned, once you start to be consistently useful, you don’t get to stop being useful. The improvement needs of your organization are infinite.

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